andrew had called the meeting, was in charge from start to finish. no one disputed his authority now to take control of the council meetings. barry watched him from a side chair and tried to feel some of the excitement the younger brother showed.
“those of you who want to look over the charts and records, please do so. i have given you the barest summary, not our methods. we can reproduce indefinitely through cloning. we have finally solved the problem that has plagued us from the beginning, the problem of the fifth-generation decline. the fifth, sixth, tenth, one-hundredth, they’ll all be perfect now.”
“but only those clones from our youngest people survive,” miriam said drily.
“we’ll work that out too,” andrew said impatiently. “in manipulating the enzymes there are some organisms that react with what appears to be almost an allergic collapse. we’ll find out why and take care of it.”
miriam was looking very old, barry realized suddenly. he hadn’t noticed it before, but her hair was white and her face was thin, with fine lines around her eyes, and she looked tired unto death.
she looked at andrew with a disarming smile. “i expect you to be able to solve the problem you have created, andrew,” she said, “but will the younger doctors be able to?”
“we shall continue to use the breeders,” andrew said with a touch of impatience. “we’ll use them to clone those children who are particularly intelligent. we’ll go to implantations of clones using the breeders as hosts to ensure a continuing population of capable adults to carry on affairs . . .”
barry found his attention wandering. the doctors had gone over it all before the council meeting; nothing new would come out here. two castes, he thought. the leaders, and the workers, who were always expendable. was that what they had foreseen in the beginning? he knew it was not possible to find any answers to his question. the clones wrote the books, and each generation had felt free to change the books to conform to their own beliefs. he had made a few such changes himself, in fact. and now andrew would change them again. and this would be the final change; none of the new people would ever think of altering anything.
“. . . even more costly in terms of manpower than we expected,” andrew was saying. “the glaciers are moving into philadelphia at an accelerating rate. we may have only two or three more years to bring out what is salvageable, and it is costing us dearly. we will need hundreds of foragers to go south and east to the coastal cities. we now have some excellent models—the edward brothers proved especially adept at foraging, as did your own little sisters, the ella sisters. we’ll use them.”
“my little ella sisters couldn’t transcribe a landscape to a map if you strung them by the heels and threatened to slice them inch by inch until they did,” miriam said sharply. “that’s exactly what i’m talking about. they can do only those things they have been taught, exactly as they’ve been taught.”
“they can’t draw maps, but they can return to where they’ve been,” andrew said, no longer trying to conceal his displeasure at the turn the meeting had taken. “that’s all we require of them. the implanted clones will do the thinking for them.”
“then it’s true,” miriam said. “if you change the formula, you can produce only those clones you are talking about.”
“right. we can’t handle two different chemical processes, two formulae, two kinds of clones. we’ve decided this is the best way to proceed at this time, and meanwhile we’ll be working on the process, i can assure you. we shall wait until the tanks are empty, in seven months, then make the changes. and we are working out a timetable to plan for the best time to clone the council members and those others who are needed in leadership capacities. we are not rushing into a new procedure without considering every aspect, i promise you, miriam. at each step we will inform this group of our progress . . .”
in a tightly thatched lean-to near the mill mark rested on his elbow and looked at the girl at his side. she was his age, nineteen. “you’re cold,” he said.
she nodded. “we won’t be able to do this much longer.”
“you could meet me in the old farmhouse,” he said.
“you know i can’t.”
“what happens if you try to cross the line? a dragon comes out and breathes fire on you?”
she laughed
“really, what happens? have you ever tried?”
now she sat up and hugged her arms about her bare body. “i’m really cold. i should get dressed.”
mark held her tunic out of reach. “first tell me what happens.”
she snatched, missed, and fell across him, and for a moment they lay close together. he pulled a cover over her and stroked her back. “what happens?”
she sighed and drew away from him. “i tried it once,” she said. “i wanted to go home, to my sisters. i cried and cried, and that didn’t help. i could see the lights, and knew they were just a few hundred feet away. i ran at first, then i began to feel strange, faint, i guess. i had to stop. i was determined to get to the dorm. i walked then, not very fast, ready to grab something if i started to faint. when i got closer to the off-limits line—it’s a hedge, you know, just a rose hedge, open at both ends so it’s no trouble at all to go around. when i got close to it, the feeling came over me again and everything began to spin. i waited a long time and it didn’t stop, but i thought, if i kept my eyes on my feet and didn’t pay any attention to anything else, i could walk anyway. i began to walk again.” she was lying rigidly beside him now, and her voice was almost inaudible when she went on. “and i started to vomit. i kept vomiting, until i didn’t have anything left in me, and then i threw up blood. and i suppose i really did faint. i woke up back in the breeders’ room.”
gently mark touched her cheek and drew her close to him. she was trembling violently. “shh, shh,” mark soothed her. “it’s all right. you’re all right now.”
no walls held them in, he thought, stroking her hair. no fence restrained them, yet they could not approach the river; they could not get nearer the mill than she was now; they could not pass the rose hedge, or go into the woods. but molly did it, he thought grimly. and they would too.
“i have to go back,” she said presently. the haunted look had come over her face. the emptiness, she had called it. “you wouldn’t know what it means,” she said, trying to explain. “we aren’t separate, you see. my sisters and i were like one thing, one creature, and now i’m a fragment of that creature. sometimes i can forget it for a short time, when i’m with you i can forget for a while, but it always comes back, and the emptiness comes again. if you turned me inside out, there wouldn’t be anything at all there.”
“brenda, i have to talk to you first,” mark said. “you’ve been here four years, haven’t you? and you’ve had two pregnancies. it’s almost time again, isn’t it?”
she nodded and pulled on her tunic.
“listen, brenda. this time it won’t be like before. they plan to use the breeders to clone themselves through implantations of cloned cells. do you understand what i’m saying?”
she shook her head, but she was listening, watching.
“all right. they’ve changed something in the chemicals they use for the clones in the tanks. now they can keep on cloning the same person over and over, but he’s a neuter. the new clones can’t think for themselves; they can’t conceive, can’t impregnate, they’ll never have children of their own. and the council members are afraid they’ll lose the scientific skills, the craftsmanship, miriam’s skill at drawing, her eidetic visual memory—all that might be lost if they don’t ensure it in the next generation through cloning. since they can’t use the tanks, they’ll use the fertile women as hosts. they’ll implant you with clones, triplets. and in nine months you’ll have three new andrews, or three new miriams, or lawrences, or whatever. they’ll use the strongest, healthiest young women for this. and they’ll continue to use artificial insemination for the others. when they produce another new talent they can use, they’ll clone him several times, implant the clones in your bodies and produce more of him.”
she was staring at him now, openly puzzled by his intensity. “what difference does it make?” she asked. “if that’s how we can best serve the community, that’s what we have to do.”
“the new babies from the tanks won’t even have names,” mark said. “they’ll be the bennies, or the bonnies, or the annes, all of them, and their clones will be called that, and theirs.”
she laced her sandal without speaking.
“and you, how many sets of triplets do you think your body can produce? three? four?”
she was no longer listening.
mark climbed the hill over the valley and sat on a limestone rock, looking at the people below, at the sprawling farm that had grown year by year until it filled the whole valley all the way to the bend in the river. only the old house was an oasis of trees in the autumn fields, which looked like a desert now. livestock were moving slowly toward the large barns. a group of small boys swept into view, playing something that involved a lot of running, falling down, and running again. twenty or more of them played together. he was too far away to hear them, but he knew they were laughing.
“what’s wrong with it?” he said aloud, and was surprised by the sound of his voice. the wind stirred the trees, but there were no words, no answer.
they were content, happy even, and he, the outsider, in his discontent would destroy that to satisfy what had to be selfish desires. in his loneliness he would disrupt an entire community that was thriving and satisfied.
below him the ella sisters came into view, ten of them, each a physical carbon copy of his mother. for a moment the vision of molly peeking out from behind a bush, laughing with him, came to mind. it vanished, and he watched the girls walk toward the dormitory. three of the miriam sisters came out, and the two groups stopped and talked.
mark remembered how molly had made people come to life on paper, a touch here, another there, an eyebrow raised too much, a dimple drawn too deep, always something not just right, but which made the sketch take on life. they couldn’t do that, he knew. not miriam, not her little ella sisters, none of them. that was gone, lost forever maybe. each generation lost something; sometimes it couldn’t be regained, sometimes it couldn’t be identified immediately. everett’s little brothers couldn’t cope with a new emergency with the computer terminal; they couldn’t improvise long enough to save the growing fetuses in the tanks if the electricity failed for several days. as long as the elders could foresee the probable troubles that might arise and train the young clones in how to handle them, they were safe enough, but accidents had a way of not being foreseen, catastrophes had a way of not being predictable, and a major accident might destroy everything in the valley simply because none of them had been trained to deal with that specific situation.
he remembered a conversation he had had with barry. “we’re living on the top of a pyramid,” he had said, “supported by the massive base, rising above it, above everything that has made it possible. we’re responsible for nothing, not the structure itself, not anything above us. we owe nothing to the pyramid, and are totally dependent on it. if the pyramid crumbles and returns to dust, there is nothing we can do to prevent it, or even to save ourselves. when the base goes, the top goes with it, no matter how elaborate the life is that has developed there. the top will return to dust along with the base when the collapse comes. if a new structure is to rise, it must start at the ground, not on top of what has been built during the centuries past.”
“you’d drag everyone back into savagery!”
“i would help them down from the point of the pyramid. it’s rotting away. the snow and ice from one direction, weather and age from the others. it will collapse, and when it does, the only ones who can survive will be those who are free from it, in no way dependent on it.”
the cities are dead; molly had told him, and it was true. ironically, the technology that made life in the valley possible might be able to sustain that life only long enough to doom any chance of recovery after the pyramid started to tilt. the top would slide down one of the sides and sink into the debris at the bottom, along with all the other technologies that had seemed perfect and infinite.
no one understood the computer, mark thought, just as no one but the lawrence brothers understood the paddle-wheel boat and the steam engine that drove it. the younger brothers could repair it, restore it to its original condition, as long as the materials were at hand, but they didn’t know how either one worked, the computer or the boat, and if a screw was missing, none of them would be able to fashion a substitute. in that fact lay the inevitable destruction of the valley and everyone in it.
but they were happy, he reminded himself, as lights began to come on in the valley. even the breeders were content; they were well cared for, pampered compared to the women who foraged each summer and those who worked long hours in the fields and gardens. and if they became too lonely, there was the comfort of drugs.
they were happy because they didn’t have enough imagination to look ahead, he thought, and anyone who tried to tell them there were dangers was by definition an enemy of the community. in disrupting their perfect existence, he had become an enemy.
his restless gaze moved over the valley, and finally stopped on the mill, and like his ancestor before him he understood that was the weak spot, the place where the valley was vulnerable.
wait until you’re a man, molly had said. but she hadn’t realized that each day he was in more danger, that each time andrew and his brothers discussed his future they were less inclined to grant him a future. he studied the mill broodingly. it was weathered almost silver, surrounded by russets and browns and golds, and the permanent green of the pines and spruces. he would like to paint it; the thought came suddenly, and he laughed and stood up. no time for that. time had become the goal; he had to have more time, and they might decide any day that allowing him time was endangering them all. abruptly he sat down once more, and now when he studied the mill and the surrounding area his eyes were narrowed in thought, and there was no smile on his face.
the council meeting had gone on most of the day, and when it ended miriam asked barry to walk with her. he looked at her questioningly, but she shook her head. they walked by the river, and when they were out of sight of the others she said, “i would like you to do me a favor, if you will. i would like to visit the old farmhouse. can you get inside?”
barry stopped in surprise. “why?”
“i don’t know why. i keep thinking i want to see molly’s paintings. i never did see them, you know.”
“but why?”
“can you get in?”
he nodded, and they started to walk again. when do you want to go?”
“is it too late now?”
the rear door of the farmhouse was loosely boarded. they didn’t even need a crowbar to open it. barry led the way up the stairs, carrying the oil lamp high, casting strange shadows on the wall beside him. the house felt very empty, as if mark had not been there for a long time.
miriam looked at the paintings quietly, not touching them, holding her hands tightly clasped before her as she went from one to another. “they should be moved,” she said finally. “they will rot away to nothing in here.”
when she came to the carving of molly that mark had made, she touched it, almost reverently. “it is she,” she said softly. “he has her gift, doesn’t he?”
“he has the gift,” barry said.
miriam rested her hand on the head. “andrew plans to kill him.”
“i know.”
“he has served his purpose, and now he is a threat and must go.” she ran her finger down the cheek of walnut. “look, it’s too high and sharp, but that makes it more like her instead of less. i don’t understand why that is, do you?”
barry shook his head.
“will he try to save himself?” miriam asked, not looking at him, her voice tightly controlled.
“i don’t know. how can he? he can’t survive alone in the woods. andrew won’t allow him to remain in the community many more months.”
miriam sighed and withdrew her hand from the carved head. “i’m sorry,” she whispered, and it was not clear whether she spoke to him or to molly.
barry went to the window overlooking the valley and looked through the peephole mark had made in the boards. how pretty it was, he thought, the gathering dusk, with pale lights glowing in the distance and the black hills encircling it all. “miriam,” he asked, “if you knew a way to help him, would you?”
for a long time she was silent, and he thought she would not answer. then she said, “no. andrew is right. he is not a physical threat now, but his presence is painful. it is as if he is a reminder of something that is too elusive to grasp, something that is hurtful, even deadly, and in his presence we try to regain it and fail over and over. we will stop feeling this pain when he is gone, not before then.” she joined him at the window. “in a year or two he will threaten us in other ways. that is what is important,” she said, nodding toward the valley. “not any individual, even if his death kills us both.”
barry put his arm about her shoulder then, and they stood looking out together. suddenly miriam stiffened and said, “look, a fire!”
there was a faint line of brightness that grew as they watched, spreading in both directions, becoming two lines, moving downward and upward. something erupted, blazed brightly, then subsided, and the lines moved onward.
“it will burn down the mill!” miriam cried, and ran from the window to the stairs. “come on, barry! it’s just above the mill!”
barry stood by the window as if transfixed by the moving lines of fire. he had done it, barry thought. mark was trying to burn down the mill.
